Football gods tried once more, and then they gave up on the Vikings

Harry P. "Bud" Grant was waiting for the press box elevator 10-12 minutes after the Vikings had been eliminated by the New York Giants 31-24 in the first round of the NFC playoffs on Sunday.

It was a longer than normal wait and we were chatting. Back in my Pioneer Press days, when Bud was our legendary coach of the Vikings, I took to calling him "Horseshoe Harry" in honor of the good fortune that seemed to show up just in the nick of time for his team on so many Sundays.

Yet in all those years, 11 played with 14-game schedules, six with 16 games and one with nine (because of the 1982 players strike), Bud never had a team embrace luck as fully as did the 2022 Vikings over their 17-game schedule.

"I thought the football gods were smiling on them again, Bud, when Slayton dropped that pass," I said. "If form followed, they were going to receive the punt, take six or seven plays to a score a tying touchdown, and then win it in overtime."

Grant nodded and said: "A couple of us said the same thing … that the drop was the break they needed."

The Giants were leading by that touchdown, facing third-and-15 at their 41, and with the Vikings having used their three timeouts during this New York possession.

Rather than running Saquon Barkley up the middle to take more time off the clock before a punt, the Giants ran a play that had worked several times:

A shallow cross against the grain and Darius Slayton was wide, wide open, reaching full speed, and was going to get the 15 as Giants quarterback Daniel Jones hit him in stride.

Slayton (four catches, 88 yards) had been the second wideout option to Isaiah Hodgins (eight catches, 105 yards, a touchdown) — and there wasn't a hint from either of these largely anonymous receivers that they might have a drop in a situation such as this.

But drop it did Slayton, first with a bobble, then with a panicked reach and slap at the ball to try to control it. The still-jacked-up crowd let out a roar of approval, as the Giants' Jamie Gillan came out for his second punt of what was now the evening.

The Vikings would be starting at their 12 with 2:56 remaining to get that tying touchdown. They had been in more perilous situations while becoming the NFL's fourth-quarter kings. One reason being, Kirk Cousins' ability to turn numerous third-quarter clunkers into fourth-quarter artistry.

And then, on second-and-4, the idea that Slayton's drop would be the limit of the gods' involvement ended. There came a bogus 15-yard roughing penalty on Dexter Lawrence, a premier Giants lineman.

The hit on Cousins wasn't too high, not too low, and not too fearsome, but referee Adrian Hill — a calm and mostly unobtrusive figure for the previous three hours — decided to help out the home team.

This put the Vikings at the 33, and Cousins immediately hit his main target on this Sunday, T.J. Hockenson, for 13 yards. He had 10 catches for 129 yards — and what an addition this tight end has been since being acquired from Detroit on Nov. 1.

Considering the quality of his first draft, giving up a second-rounder was easily the best move made by Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the rookie general manager, for the 2022 season.

Anybody seen that young gentleman in a public forum recently, by the way? Ever since Adofo-Mensah had a fairly candid interview with USA Today in late July that caused some controversy, he has seemed to stay farther out of the picture than Patrick Peterson was in pass coverage a few times Sunday.

Back to the action:

The Viking had first down at their 46 with 2:09 left … and the only issue seemed to be if Cousins, Mr. Late Lightning, would get his team into the end zone too quickly, allowing Jones to make a couple of plays (with either legs or arm) and set up a 61-yard game-winning field goal from Graham Gano.

And then the world turned again on Kirk and the Vikings. Suddenly, they got to fourth-and-8 and there was Cousins bringing back that old habit that everyone thought left with Mike Zimmer's coaching staff … throwing well under the sticks with a defender there to make a play.

In this case, Hockenson was 5 yards short of a first down when Giants safety Xavier McKinney made the stop with 1:44 left. Three kneel-downs by Jones and that was it.

The gods had again tried to do their thing for these Vikings, but this time Cousins and coach Kevin O'Connell — and, of course, the defense with another 400 yards allowed (431, actually) — did not have the machismo to accept this final blessing.

Postgame, O'Connell wanted to rip Cousins for throwing under the sticks, for not throwing to one of the "three eligibles" beyond the first-down marker, and he almost did … but then the coach hedged.

Yes, Kirk's almost-no-chance-for-success throw to Hockenson was decisive, but it wasn't in the same category for absurdity as the third-and-1 O'Connell broke out to end the Vikings' second drive of the game.

They had swept down the field for a touchdown on the first possession, and appeared to be in a fine flow with third-and-1 early in the second drive, when they tried a trick play that had Justin Jefferson throwing to Cousins in the left flat, from where Cousins was supposed to … who in the name of Les Steckel knows?

After watching in the always-popular stunned disbelief, I went to an excellent and well-reasoned football reporter — ESPN's Kevin Seifert — and opined:

"There have been a lot of games played since American football was invented and that was the worst play call ever made in any of them."

Seifert did not disagree.

Quite a clunker there, coach and squad. Even the gods finally had to give up you.